


Crossroads

by Pigeon_theoneandonly



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, between me2 and me3, conversations that could have been, like barely mentioned at all, pre-andromeda launch, two solutions to the same problem, very very background shenko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:06:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24331777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigeon_theoneandonly/pseuds/Pigeon_theoneandonly
Summary: As the Hyperion prepares for launch, Alec Ryder begins to harbor doubts about his mission.  He decides to consult with the galaxy's resident reaper expert.  But Shepard isn't exactly eager to talk.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Crossroads

_December 2185_

Ryder’s late, so she’s into her second beer by the time he arrives and takes the seat across from her. “You’re a hard woman to find, Shepard.”

She takes him in. His voice matches the comm transmission, near as she can tell. Somehow older than she expected, with a face like leather and a swept mane of gray hair. “It’s Nathaly. And you should’ve been here an hour ago.” 

He raises his eyebrows. “I don’t have to call you Lila?”

“Lila was the name of my imaginary sister when I was about, oh, eight years old. Give or take.” She sits back with a sigh. “Which of my parents spilled?”

“Your mother wouldn’t take my call. My reputation precedes me.”

She watches him, then fumbles in her pocket and lights a cigarette. “I have to say, Ryder, I wondered if the N7 commendation was as bullshit as the rest of you, but you did manage to track me down, all the way out here. So maybe not.”

He chuckles. “Alec, I insist. And I didn’t come here with bullshit.”

They’re interrupted as the lone server comes to take his order— coffee, black. She requests a third beer, not remotely caring what he thinks of her drinking, and takes another drag. Ryder wanted this meeting. He’s going to have to figure out how to ask what he came to ask. She’s not inclined to make it easy.

Ryder clears his throat, and glances around the empty bar. “This place is off the beaten path and then some.”

“It’s Christmas. I didn’t have many options.” It’s a dive and she knows it, though with a good view of the harbor. This planet’s such a backwater everyone can afford good real estate. “I’d think even a disgraced officer would have better places to be than the ass end of the Terminus.”

“My wife was Jewish. Possession’s nine tenths of the law, so my kids are, too.” He takes in her expression and coughs. “A bad joke.”

Shepard makes a noise somewhere between satisfaction and contempt. “I could’ve guessed you wouldn’t win dad of the year.”

“We all have our regrets.” Ryder eyes her. “You have kids?”

“No.” Shortly. Shorter, maybe, than is expected.

“Married?”

“Almost, a few times.” Her mouth quirking, because it’s sad and true. “Truth? I had a ten-minute call with my ex-boyfriend this afternoon, and a fifth of good scotch waiting at home, and those’ll be the highlights of my Christmas.”

“Then forgive me if you can’t understand, but sometimes, doing the right thing for your family means you miss out on everything else.” 

“And that right thing is this Andromeda Initiative.” She drains the last of beer two, and hopes the waitress hurries up. She honestly couldn’t be more bored. There’s too many disasters here at home for her to be concerned with new ones a galaxy away.

“My children are going into stasis in two days, Nathaly. I’m supposed to be there with them. I need to know that this is the right decision. I need to know if what you’ve said about the reapers is true.”

She tenders him an exasperated look and glances off, smoke curling up beside her head. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since ‘83, it’s that there’s no proving anything to someone who doesn’t want to listen. And no point in wasting my breath.”

Ryder grows a shade less patient. “In my day, N7s didn’t run off to backwater colonies to hide from their problems.”

“In your day, all you needed to get an N7 commendation was avoid pissing yourself if a turian winked your way.” Shepard snorts, and takes another drag, taps off the ash on the edge of the table. They’re outside and the wind will blow it away. “I needed to clear my head. Get just five minutes without someone asking me to do something.”

“Before the real war comes?”

She regards him a long moment. “So you’re already convinced. Why do you need me?”

“I had to look you in the eye.” A pause. “And I wanted to tell you about the Initiative. More than I could say over an open comm line.”

Part of her wants to get up and leave. After Cerberus, hell, after the spectre program, Shepard was done with people trying to sell her on anything. But she’s always been cursed with an inquisitive nature. One that had to light the fuse just to see how big the boom could get. “I don’t know which of us is crazier. Me for thinking we can win against something like the reapers, or you for thinking people can survive two million light years of dark space.”

“Me neither.” The coffee arrives, and her beer. He takes a careful sip, and grimaces. “You sure can pick them.”

Her mouth turns up at the corner. “I don’t come here for the coffee.”

“It’s the last place in the galaxy that will let you smoke at the table,” he guesses, not completely missing the mark.

“Batarians love their cigarettes. It’s more common out here than you’d think.” Shepard sits back. “We’re still not at the part where you ask me what you want to know.”

And she’s right, she knows she is, when he looks at her, long and hard and slightly stricken. His uncertainty naked as it’s never been before anyone else. “How do we know this is only a Milky Way problem?”

The answer’s just as blunt. “We don’t.”

“How do we know they won’t follow us there?”

This time, it takes longer to respond. “Reapers aren’t alive. They’re a virus. They attach to any spacefaring organic civilization they sniff out. If they sniff you out?” 

She shrugs. His mouth tightens. He takes a sip of the awful coffee, and looks out over the harbor.

“But there’s this.” Shepard takes another sip of beer. Wipes her mouth. “They’re at the end of a cycle, completely depleted of resources. They don’t plan on human time scales. And I bet they don’t move as fast as your Initiative ships. They’ll want to stock up, so there’s a couple hundred years of harvest after we’re defeated, if we’re defeated. Let’s call it three centuries even. That’s a hell of a head start, knowing what you know. We didn’t get that here.”

“We’re leaving QECs in secure locations. So we’ll know what happens.”

“That’s a bad idea,” she says. Flatly.

He winces, as if in private agreement. But he changes the subject. “There’s another reason I’m here.”

She raises her eyebrows. Suspicious already, but allowing Ryder the courtesy of measuring his own rope. He continues, “There’s a good argument that your war isn’t something anyone can win. Not with only a few squandered years of preparation. We could use you on the other side. A chance to do it right, with people who will listen.”

Shepard snorts, and drains half the beer in one pull. “People who listen. Sure.”

“I mean it.”

“I’m sure you do.” Her eyes cut to him. Angry for the first time since he sat down. “I’m not running out on this galaxy. It’s mine to protect. That’s what being a spectre is, and an N7 marine, too.”

“I am protecting this galaxy.” Ryder folds his hands on the dirty table, matching her word for leaden word. “I’m making sure enough of it survives to carry on. It’s not going to be easy.”

She looks away, a muscle twitching in her jaw. Because it does sound nice. Giving up on a problem she hasn’t been able to solve in nearly four damn years, that cost her life and a hell of a lot more beyond that. Move on to something fresh. Clean. Fixable.

If she thought for a second Kaidan might go, she’d actually consider it.

But he won’t, and she knows she’ll taste regret five minutes after the Initiative thaws her out. So she looks back at Alec Ryder evenly. “We’ve both made our choices. I’ve thought for awhile I was meant to die here, doing this. If anything’s big enough to become fate, it’s the reapers.”

“Or the Initiative.” Accepting fully the implication. “I didn’t expect to convince you.”

Her eyebrows rise. “Then what?”

“I had hoped I could persuade you to leave this little paradise—” sarcasm dripping off each syllable— “For just long enough to take a little tour. Maybe help me set up a few things.”

The cigarette had burned out. She grinds it into the deck. “Set up a few things.”

“You know.” Ryder sits forward. “Make preparations.”


End file.
